Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A variety of methods exist to generate information about biological tissues. Such methods can include exposing the biological tissues to an energy or field (e.g., an electric field, a magnetic field, an electromagnetic field, a light, an acoustic energy) and detecting a response of the biological tissues (e.g., a modification of the energy, and/or the emission of a second energy) that is related to one or more properties of the biological tissues. Properties of the biological tissues could include a type and/or distribution of cells and/or tissues within the biological tissues, a health or disease state of the biological tissues, the presence of a fluorophore or other contrast agent in the biological tissues, or some other information about the biological tissues. Such measured properties could be related to a health or medical condition of a human or animal containing the biological tissues and/or from which the biological tissues are derived.
In some examples, information about biological tissues could be generated to guide a surgical intervention related to the biological tissues. For example, the presence, location, extent, or other information about cancerous cells in a biological tissue could be determined and a surgical intervention (e.g., a removal or destruction of the cancerous cells, a placement of a drug-eluting device or other artifact within a mass of the cancerous cells) could be performed based on the determined information. In some examples, such information is generated before a surgical intervention (e.g., by a pre-surgical MRI, CT, or other type of scan or imaging) and used to inform a surgeon's actions during the surgical intervention.